White Walls
by MegTDJ
Summary: The cure for harsh dreams is a softer reality. 17 in the Love Comes Softly series. DanJan


Title: White Walls  
Author: MegTDJ  
Category: Missing scene; drama  
Rating: K+  
Pairing: Daniel/Janet pre-ship  
Spoilers: Legacy  
Summary: The cure for harsh dreams is a softer reality. #17 in the Love Comes Softly series.  
Disclaimer: Stargate SG-1, its universe and its characters are not mine. The story itself is, however, so please don't archive without my permission.

Author's notes: Thanks to Misty and Kerri, as always, forever and ever amen. ;)

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox

**White Walls**

_She was running... running aimlessly through the corridors of the hospital, the objects around her swimming in and out of focus in a mocking dance. She knew she had to get somewhere as quickly as she could, but she couldn't remember where._

_"Help!" she cried. "Somebody please, help me!"_

_"Janet!"_

_She turned around when she heard someone call her name, and gasped in fear when she saw who it was._

_Sam... only it wasn't Sam. Her eyes were glowing._

_She started running again, until she finally found a door that was open. She ran inside and closed the door behind her, leaning against it to catch her breath._

_"Janet."_

_"Daniel? Thank God it's you." She smiled and moved towards him, but stopped when she realized that he wasn't at all happy to see her._

_"Look what you've done," he said angrily, pointing at the door._

_She realized where she was when she turned around - they were in a white padded cell, and she had just locked them both inside. "We can call for help," she said, hurrying over to the door._

_"They'll never hear us," Daniel said. "We're stuck here forever."_

_She looked down at her arms in horror when she found she couldn't lift them. Somehow she had been fastened into a straitjacket. "No..."_

_"Forever."_

_"It can't be... someone will come looking for us!"_

_"Forever."_

_"But we're not crazy!"_

_"Forever!"_

_"No!"_

"No!" Janet kicked her way out of her tangled sheets and sat up in the bed, gasping for breath. It took her a minute to calm down and realize it was just a dream.

"Dammit," she groaned, burying her face in her pillow. That was the second nightmare she'd had that night, and she knew it wasn't likely to be the last. She was never going to get any sleep.

Just a couple more hours and Cassie would be getting up for school, so Janet decided she'd be better off going downstairs and watching some TV rather than trying for more sleep anyway. So, she curled up on the couch with an old movie, and was soon much more engrossed in her own thoughts than in what she was watching.

_"Janet, I'm not crazy. Why don't you believe me?"_

_"I do believe you, Daniel," she lied, trying not to show any outward sign of the agony she was in over seeing him in his present condition - eyes red from fear and crying, his hands fastened to the belt around his waist so he couldn't lunge at anyone as he had with Colonel O'Neill. She tried to keep her expression neutral and unreadable, but she knew that in itself was enough to tell Daniel that she was lying. She turned her face away from him and busied herself with preparing his meds._

_"You don't," he whispered. "You don't believe me. God... Janet." He stifled a sob and suddenly jumped down from the hospital bed, knocking the tray that stood between them to the ground. "I am not crazy!" he cried. "It was them! Not me! Them!"_

_Guards rushed into the room and grabbed him by the shoulders, but Daniel tried to fight them off._

_"Them! Not me!"_

_Janet covered her mouth with her hand as Daniel was led out of the room and down the hall. She couldn't stop herself from walking over to the door and watching as they led him kicking and screaming into a white padded cell._

_"Them! Not me! I'm not crazy! It was them!"_

Janet gasped and struggled to sit up, gripping the couch cushions in her fists and looking frantically around the room until her disorientation passed. She groaned when she realized it had been another nightmare.

This was getting old very, very quickly.

She felt like the walking dead as she took a shower, ate breakfast, and dropped Cassie off at school that morning. Too many sleepless nights over the past week, and too much stress and worry on top of it. She knew that if she didn't de-stress pronto, she was going to make herself sick... and sick was something she'd already had enough of for a while, thanks to Machello.

But how could she de-stress when she was going to be at work all day, taking care of Cassie all evening, and would probably be plagued with nightmares again all night?

She was just starting to consider heading home and spending the morning in bed when she realized which street she was driving down. Daniel's apartment building was just a block away.

"I wonder if he's actually resting today like I told him to?" she murmured as the building came into view. She kept her eyes on the windows of his apartment as she stopped at the stop sign a short distance away, thinking back over the past few days and all that Daniel had been through. She was beginning to think that man had some kind of Murphy's Law curse upon him, because anything that _could_ happen...

A short beep from the car behind her brought her attention back to the road, but she had just started driving again when it was diverted back to Daniel's window.

Someone was moving around inside his apartment.

Before she could think twice, Janet pulled over into a parking space on the side of the road. She sat there looking up at the building for a full minute, pondering whether or not to go up there and check on him. He'd looked very tired the night before, after all. She would have expected him to sleep all day today. If he was awake this early, chances were something was wrong.

When she saw him pass slowly by the window again with his hands on his head, she made up her mind - she was going up there to see if he was okay. She was his doctor and his friend, so such a visit was only natural.

Not to mention that she felt completely responsible for what had happened to him, and was anxious to do all she could to make up for it. She just didn't want to admit that to herself.

As luck would have it, just as she was approaching the building a man and woman were leaving it. They held the locked door open for her, so she opted against buzzing Daniel's apartment and walked right in. As soon as she'd done it, though, she realized how rude it might come across to suddenly show up unannounced.

Still, if he'd been living in a house she would have gone straight to his door, so there really wasn't much of a difference, was there? She made her way to his door and knocked.

A few moments passed before she heard the rattle of a lock and the door swung open.

She forced a smile as she looked up into Daniel's bleary-eyed face. "Hi," she said.

Daniel furrowed his forehead at her as he leaned against the doorframe. "Hi," he repeated. "What are you doing here?"

"I... just thought I'd check on you before I headed for work," she said. "I saw you in the window, so I knew you were awake."

Daniel narrowed his eyes. "You were spying on me?"

Janet's stomach dropped into her shoes, and her jaw followed suit. "No, I... I was..."

He smiled and pushed away from the doorframe to open the door wider. "I was kidding," he said. "Come in."

Janet felt her face flush with embarrassment as she stepped past him and into the apartment.

"Can I get you anything? Coffee?" Daniel asked as he moved towards the kitchen.

"No, thanks, I'm not staying."

Daniel gave her a dubious look. "You think I buy that you just stopped by to check on me?"

Janet wasn't sure how to answer that, so she just shook her head and gave him a questioning look.

"Come on, Janet," he said. "I saw the way you watched my every move when I came back to the base last night. Admit it... you bought into Mackenzie's theory that I was schizophrenic, and now it's hard to shake it even though you know the truth."

"No... no, that's not true at all! We know it was all because of Machello's invention... hell, I know it firsthand, so I'm the first to agree that you're one hundred percent back to normal. I just... wanted to make sure you were getting some rest, and that the drugs were leaving your system without any ill effects."

Daniel studied her as she spoke, and then rubbed the back of his neck and sighed. "Sorry," he said. "I guess I still have a bit of paranoia left over." He made a face and continued towards the kitchen. "No ill effects," he called out to her as he started pouring two cups of coffee. "Unless you count this pounding headache and not being able to sleep last night, but they could have been caused by anything."

"Do you want me to..."

"No," Daniel answered before she could finish her question, emerging from the kitchen with a mug in each hand. "I'm fine. Aspirin's finally starting to kick in."

Janet took the mug that he offered her and sat down on the couch. When she gave it a tentative sip, she was surprised to find that he'd made hers exactly the way she liked it without even having to ask. "I did tell you I wasn't staying," she said, half-teasing, as she set the mug down on the coffee table.

Daniel shrugged and flopped down into the chair across from her. "You look as exhausted as I feel," he said. "And... I guess I could do with the company right now." He looked down at his mug as though he were ashamed to admit to this, but looked back up at her a moment later when she didn't react.

Janet gave him an encouraging smile. "I guess it doesn't matter if I'm late today," she said. "They'll contact me if I'm needed."

Daniel smiled back in relief. "Wanna watch a movie?"

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox

Janet yawned, stretched, and opened her eyes just in time to see the end credits rolling. She grunted and twisted her body so she could look at her watch. It was well past noon. She must have fallen asleep at the beginning of the second movie and slept all the way through it.

She sat up and looked over at Daniel, who was curled up on the other end of the couch with his head on the same bundled-up blanket Janet had been using as a pillow.

Obviously he'd missed it, too.

She was just about to wake him up and suggest that she finally leave for work when it hit her - she'd been asleep for two hours, and she hadn't had a bad dream. In fact, the only dream she could remember having at all was about work, and while it was still set in hospital corridors and white-walled rooms, there had been nothing frightening about it in the least.

Everything seemed to be heading back to normal.

Daniel was still dead to the world when Janet slowly got up from the couch and took the movie out of the VCR. She stood there watching him sleep for a moment, not sure whether or not to turn the TV off and leave, but finally she picked up another movie from the stack beside the TV and popped it in. Then she went back to her spot on the couch and got comfortable.

Soon she fell asleep again, but this time her dreams were of good times with her friends, and the noticeable absence of any white walls.

The End


End file.
